The savage massacre of Armenian Christians by the Muslim Turks during World War I is dramatically being played out in the movie, The Promise. A historically accurate look at the reason for this massacre from the rarely told viewpoint of the Assyrians is available in Joe David’s latest novel, The Infidels. Based on his mother’s experiences, it examines a truth often omitted in the headlines.

Reading the book "The Infidels" by Joe David is like entering a time machine and watching a rerun of today's Middle Eastern news, where only the names have been changed but no innocents are being protected. The story related in the book occurred a hundred years ago, but it is repeating itself today.

I found Joe David’s version of a rarely discussed genocide, the plotted murder of the Assyrians by the Kurds and the Turks during World War I, to be thoroughly engrossing. In writing his novel, David not only demonstrates a significant knowledge of the customs and history of the times, but he also vividly brings to life the past in an exciting and meaningful way.

Joe David’s latest book is in the great tradition of novels like Forty Days of Musa Dagh and histories like the Rape of Nanking. It reveals the scars of brutality and inhumanity as history intersects with the ordinary lives of innocent people.

Editor George Thomas KurianThe World Christian Encyclopedia The Nelson New Christian Dictionary

The Infidels

by Joe David

The Great War began with two shots: one aimed at the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Hapsburg throne, and the other aimed at his wife, Sophie. What many thought would be just another Balkan squabble quickly escalated into a major war felt around the world.

As Europe burst into flames and millions of soldiers began battling the forces of nationalism, the Ottoman Turks joined arms with the Germans and extended the conflict to their longtime enemies, the Russians and the Christians. Incited by secular leaders in Constantinople, northwestern Persia became a warzone in which radical religious tribes invaded Christian villages and systematically martyred hundreds of thousands of ‘infidels” who dared to resist conversion.

On a small slice of ancient, isolated land owned by a wealthy Assyrian family, a young Christian girl awakens to the brutal massacre of her race in a war that she is too young to understand. Stripped of her privileged and comfortable existence, pursued by a Muslim governor – a symbol of the rising new world order – and surrounded by hostility and greed, deep-sated hatred and unspeakable horrors, she must somehow come to terms with the nightmare that her life has become.